I know a lot of you have already read the reports and thus no longer care, but the book might make a nice gift for someone you know who is entering into that phase of their life now or soon.

Thing 2

I have knitted a music video for my brother's ambient electronica band Syntax Error. The video can be downloaded here for free as QuickTime or Windows Media. For you audiophiles my brother will be encoding a special DivX version with high quality audio, but it isn't online yet.

Is there anything you can't do? Oh wait, I believe we've been over this and the answer is no.

The Syntax Error video is amazing; a crowning achievement for your portfolio... if you are still interested in that line of work. The part where the mirrored explosion becomes a locomotive is particularily illuminating. Wow wow wow!

Also, tell Isoceles Cat that Syntax Error is sounding better and better as time goes on. The song in the video is really sounding professional, and there's excellent attention to the use of tension and buildup in the piece. I'm looking forward to the next album.

That's actually a nightmare image of mine based upon a Sesame Street skit in which two muppets are perplexed and frightened when they repeatedly open a door standing in the middle of nowehere which reveals a black locomotive steaming relentlessly toward them.

I think it might've been with Grover.

At any rate the juggernaut nature of the train fixed itself in my mind as a bad dream in which I cannot look away from the oncoming train -- neither eyeballs nor neck will obey instructions to turn aside.

Yeah, it just freaked me out for some reason -- the way that the event of the train smashing through seemed inevitable. I only remember feeling vaguely uneasy at the time, but the nightmare I had that night capped it for me.

I've carried it with me all these years.

It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the first ST:TNG episode featuring the Borg.

I'm noticing the subliminal images now, after repeated viewings. There's a baby's face (Ingrid's?) looking up in yellow, and then there's a negative image of a face in blue later on. And of course the skulls... This is really something.

Is there a way you could send me a DVD of this? I can paypal you postage.

In case you wish to continue exploring psychedelic imagery, here's a fun toy I've been playing with: VIDVOX GridPro. It's a realtime video effects package thing, used by VJs and based on QuickTime. Basically you can play two video streams (MOV files) simultaneuously and apply realtime video effects to each stream, then you can crossfade the two streams, and finally apply realtime effects to the output stream. Amazingly it works well enough even on my slow iBook.

To work with it you really need a MIDI controller so you can map physical dials and faders onto software controls, since just using the mouse can be uncomfortable. Borrow your brother's-- the one with the 16 unlabelled dials.

The software is pretty easy to use, especially for me. I can translate my DJing skills into a visual medium. The biggest problem for me is that I don't have any source of videos to mix with, but by using raw segments from the Pan video and other similar variations of the stuff you've already created, you could probably set up a pretty amazing live video show to acompany Syntax Error. You know, if you wanted to. Try it sometime, it's pretty fun.

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